A Cautionary Technology Tale

This is an absolutely true story which took place last Thursday, June 26. The names have NOT been changed to protect the innocent because we enjoy giving Noel Kane-Maguire grief about this.

Every summer the Furman Chemistry Department hosts a corporate luncheon to show appreciation for the sponsors of their summer research program. Professor Noel Kane-Maguire did a Photostory presentation with pictures of the labs, the new science building, etc. When he was finished, he left his laptop in place while Professor Tony Arrington got up to introduce the guest speaker from a local company. As Tony was making his remarks, Noel’s laptop went into screensaver mode, which featured all of the images in Noel’s “My Pictures” folder. Several in the audience thought this was part of the presentation, but wondered how photos of Noel’s grandkids fit into summer research. The clencher came as the guest speaker came to the podium just as a photo of Noel’s twin brother Leon appeared on the screen, flipping a bird at the camera. Of course most of the students and visitors thought that this was Noel himself expressing his sentiments of this particular speaker. Fortunately, the speaker was a friend of Noel’s and understood his lack of tech attention, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

The moral of the story is that you should never have something on your laptop that you don’t want your audience to see, even if you think it might be hidden.